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Basic bread recipe for sandwiches and focaccia (and pizza)

Wednesday, 16 April 2008

It’s been years since I baked yeast-based breads. Glad I’ve picked up the habit again! Having focaccia to snack on, or just a decent loaf for sandwiches, makes for comforting (not to mention tastier and fresher) eats. The dough is versatile, so I also use it for pizzas.

Three cookbooks aided me in my rediscovery of bread making:

  • Bread, by Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno, for ideas on weight proportions in the British edition of the publication. A beautiful D.K. book, catering to my visual food porn desires. Also contains intriguing suggestions on crazy flours and grains to experiment with. I have the earlier 1998 UK edition; I haven’t seen whether the more recent 2007 US edition would include weight measurements.
  • Cookwise, by Shirley Corriher, for tips on kneading by machine and sponge development (a.k.a., pre-fermentation). She goes a bit too crazy with a multitude of ingredients for just a basic loaf, but it’s still informative and interesting reading. Especially the fact that the sponge step doesn’t always require hours or days!
  • Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary edition, by Rombauer, Rombauer-Becker and Becker. The basic white bread recipe satisfies with a small number of straightforward ingredients. But far too much salt! (That was easy to fix, though.)

yogurt bread

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Blissfully smooth WordPress 2.5 upgrade

Saturday, 12 April 2008

Upgrading from WordPress 2.3.x to 2.5 was as smooth as silk. No joke, I made only a few of core changes, but they were on the level of trivial tweaks:

  • Upload my preferred set of /wp-includes/images/smilies/.
  • Modify /wp-includes/functions.php to recognize said custom smilies.
  • Change /wp-includes/category-template.php to say articles instead of topics for title tips while hovering over tag links, darn it.

I like WordPress’s new admin UI, especially the spiffy blue-grey-orange color scheme. Even though I’m still playing with the interface, tasks remain straightforward.

What’s remaining? Upgrading my theme, but as with the upgrade to WP 2.3, I can work through that separately, at my convenience. In addition, I’ve noticed only one weird plugin issue, so far; can’t do much but wait until an update arrives for that.

Simple Tags v1.5.3: No longer see the long, sortable list of tags under Manage Tags. Being able to sort alphabetically (as well as by use) makes tag management bearable with the gazillion tags I have. I also prefer how Simple Tags allows removal and renaming of tags. Update (14 April 2008): Version 1.5.6, released yesterday, fixes the issue. Yay!

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Local Salvadoran restaurants, pupuserías

Monday, 7 April 2008

Oh, how I love pupusas: The creaminess of cheese and masa, with tidbits of chicken if I’m lucky. A fine reason to seek out eateries that focus on food from El Salvador. Not quite as well-known as Mexican food, Salvadoran cuisine tends towards the mild.

The Salvadoran version of horchata is the next-most-important thing. I still don’t think I’ve got the recipe quite right, so that’s another item I always order at Salvadoran restaurants.

My favorites (best listed first) are a tie between Vicky’s and Sabor. My standard order is chicken (with cheese), beans (with cheese), loroco (with cheese) or even zucchini (with cheese). Curtido (pickled cabbage slaw, sometimes with chile, carrots, oregano and/or epazote) and (non-spicy) tomato sauce accompany the pupusas. (I have yet to find a tomato-sauce-for-pupusas that I enjoy. Unfortunately, they all seem bland, almost like tomato soup or sauce from a can.)

What are your favorite (or not-so-favorite) pupuserías? Especially those with interesting or unconventional fillings. Have any of you tried rice pupusas?

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Encyclopedia of Life: Initial launch

Saturday, 5 April 2008

Last year I had eagerly anticipated the arrival of the Encyclopedia of Life (EoL). Entries on individual species became viewable on 28 February, a few months earlier than the projected mid-2008 deadline. Coolness!

Currently they have twenty-four exemplar species pages, tens of thousands of authenticated (but not detailed) species pages, and about a million other species pages with minimal, unauthenticated data. Assuming that there are nearly 2 million species to document, that’s not too shabby for an initial proof of concept launch! Filling in the blanks will be ongoing work, because biology is a growing and dynamic field, after all. But if the content is informative and well-crafted, I certainly don’t mind.

I’ve been watching this site since its launch, and a few of my criticisms below have already been resolved over the past month. The EoL still has a long road to travel, nevertheless it’s great to see the progress and improvement.

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Hot bird action

Friday, 28 March 2008

Unfortunately, the title of this entry is quite literal: Last week a hawk died in our neighborhood. As the poor thing expired, it managed to take out a transformer and blow a power line —rendering our block powerless until dinnertime. It had (the remains of) a squirrel, so one theory was that as the squirrel struggled, one of the creatures grabbed onto another wire…then POOOW! Yep, loud bang and smoke resulting in an ex-hawk, ex-squirrel, and no electricity. 🙁

There wasn’t much of the miserable rodent left. But my morbid curiosity (with permission from PG&E and the fire department) allowed me some picture taking. I think it was a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk, or possibly a Cooper’s Hawk. Hard to tell, with its belly singed and tail obscured. (I restrained myself from turning it over.)

Continue onward to view a raptor memorial, as well as for additional bird news. I.e., this serves as a warning about a dead animal photo; it’s isn’t gross IMO, just sad, really.

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Conjunctional salad: Couscous (or) quinoa with nuts (and) fruit (and/or) vegetables

Sunday, 23 March 2008

Pasta and grain salads have so much potential for variety! But the cold pesto pasta with mondo veggo chunks, or the soggy tabbouli, are often uninspired. Then Robert and Sonya introduced me to the joy of couscous with fruits and nuts. Sooo gooooood.

Recently I made a quinoa salad with similar ingredients: Juice for tartness, olive oil, shallots, prunes, apricots, pine nuts, mint, cilantro… The use of conjunctions in this salad exhibits its inherent variety. O:-) And you’re likely to end up with something quite tasty.

quinoa saladQuinoa salad with pine nuts, leftover chard, and a bunch o’other things.

If this isn’t served cold or at room temperature, does this mean it’s a kind of pilaf? According to the definitions I’ve seen, pilaf is usually made from rice or bulgar wheat that’s usually been browned in butter or oil. So I’ll stick with the salad label.

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Zot!

Sunday, 16 March 2008

Last month Kam was clearing out a bunch of her comics, and while going through the boxes, I came upon five later issues of Scott McCloud’s Zot! Seeing them reminded me that I had only the first three graphic novels (the only three Kitchen Sink Press published before they went down the sink), and had only read up through what I owned. Kam kindly gave me her copies (issues #31 through #35), and I set out to finish the fourth arc by searching eBay. Sure enough, I was able to complete my collection, at a pretty reasonable cost.

Cover of Zot! Book 1

Before I get too much ahead of myself, a summary: Jenny Weaver, a teen in the 1980s, is tired of her family’s frequent moves. She’s worn down, disillusioned and depressed. That changes when Zot, a teen boy from another, shinier dimension, literally flies into her. The changes don’t displace her dull existence (as much as she’d wish), they just complicate her life, although in fun and unexpected ways.

McCloud’s artwork reminds me of my childhood love of embroidery samplers and rainbows. No, no, don’t think of tacky crafts! Instead, picture beautifully arranged comprehensive decorations, motifs and hues. His illustration technique somehow manages to densely assemble a large variety of textures, patterns and colors, without dissolving into a style which would otherwise feel thinly spread or unfocused —or interfering with the story.

(Avast! The following might be construed as exposing minor spoilers.)

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Cinequest 2008

Tuesday, 11 March 2008

This is the first year we decided to not see any of the shorts collections at Cinequest. Instead we watched five films from around the globe. So how did the 18th Annual San José Film Festival go?

The Aerial (La Antena). Directed by Esteban Sapir, Argentina 2006, black and white. In the City, oppressively controlled by Señor T.V., no one has a voice; the television is the center of everyone’s life, and words are subtitles to be read. The style is similar to old fashioned silent films, except the characters interact with the subtitles, shrinking away or pushing the words aside —quite innovative! What nearly ruins an otherwise good film is a couple heavy-handed symbols, which I felt superfluous, insulting the collective intelligence of the audience. (Indeed, giggles and smirks occurred in the theatre whenever those symbols appeared.)

Departure (Fritt fall); directed by Caroline Cowan. Butterflies (Pirret); directed by Kjell-Åke Andersson. Both short films are from Sweden and released in 2007. Both star Lotta Tejle, first as a lonely suicidal woman, then as a goofy, greedy scientist —showing great range of ability, between drama and slapstick. Departure is about illegal immigration in western Europe, namely the interaction between Agneta (Tejle) and a young homeless Romanian, Vocho. Butterlies is a silly yet enjoyable story of Sara, an imaginative little girl who can fly…when inspired, not on demand.

Getting Home (Luo ye gui gen). Directed by Zhang Yang, China 2006. The best film I watched at the festival. About middle-aged Zhao who carries his friend’s body on a trip across China, and the funky characters he meets as he heads towards his friend’s hometown. Quirky, touching, hilarious, with beautiful vistas.

The Mourning Forest (Mogari no mori). Directed by Naomi Kawase, Japan 2007. Machiko mourns for her young son who died recently. Shigeki mourns for his wife who died 33 years ago. The film starts beautifully, with panoramas of mountains and fields of tea. Unfortunately, it slows down awkwardly to a long-drawn-out forest trek with Blair Witch camera moves, as the characters search for closure.

A Time to Die (Pora umierać). Directed by Dorota Kędzierzawska, Poland 2007, black & white. Amusing to watch the two lead actresses, 92-year-old Danuta Szaflarska and not-so-loyal yet charming border collie, Phila. What do they do when her cowardly son and odious rich neighbor try to buy her dilapidated Renaissance mansion? Or when rambunctious kids from the music school next door keep sneaking in to play in her yard? Gorgeous cinematography, expressing a love for old buildings.

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Bathroom remodel from… a couple years ago

Thursday, 6 March 2008

For years we lived with a bathroom that I called the Pink Horror. No ventilation (other than the window and door), a rotten (literally) paint job done by the house seller, and pink tiles. I hate the color pink, and Pepto-Bismo Pink just ain’t gonna be an exception.

Before bathroom remodelBefore bathroom remodel.

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Neighborhood bird watching list

Monday, 3 March 2008

I know I’ll continue my habit of writing lists on bits of paper, but I thought it’d be useful to maintain an online list of the birds I’ve seen in our neighborhood. I’ve limited this to visitors to our yards and the nearby park.

“Birders, are ye?” Well, I prefer the term bird watching, mainly because Simon and I are very amateurish about the whole avian sighting thing. We’ve gotten into the habit only about four or five years ago. Having a garden helps, I tell ya. Along with binoculars.

I highly recommend the Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America as a guidebook. Since I often hear the birds before I see them, having good audio guides also help, such as the Peterson Field Guides Western Birding by Ear (a good teaching and learning resource) and Western Bird Songs (more comprehensive).

I also link to the corresponding page at the awesome Cornell Lab of Ornithology for each species. Their videos require QuickTime (pretty, but limited), and their audio samples require RealPlayer (ugh, why not MP3?), although the latter comes in both Mac and Linux versions. On to the list!

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